Pros and cons of Ideation and What is an ideation? Why do we need it?

This is not meant for a specific organization, but its a generic thought of mine. Kindly do not correlate this to any activity done by any organization. Its my thought process on generalizing the activity of Ideation.

As everybody are aware, Idea management is something that need to be provided with the highest priority just like the deliverable that we have. Because idea will make you unique or differentiate you from others, for the following reasons.

1. Idea tells you the story of a deliverable.
2. Idea tells your understanding about the application.
3. A good idea will be appreciated even in a place where good deliverable is not appreciated. Definitely idea implementation may be painful though. As deliverable is always expected, but idea not necessarily.
4. Idea will bring a new level of confidence.
5. Idea increases the level of collaboration among the team.
6. An Idea will be the future. It will help you to see from different angles that a customer thinks.
7. Onshore/offshore/developer/manager/business collaboration increases.

So I should say that an idea has got a significant importance in our career life, just like your deliverables.

Ideas should be the heart of deliverables. In any ideation process, the following should be my suggestions towards it.

1. We should see Ideation and associated collaboration as one which really required and one which is an absolute necessity. Also I should say that the collaboration among the team members should be increased as part of the ideation. The team members and business analyst should sit in a room and should discuss about the bottle necks of the problems and should come up with problems and should give room for a thought in a month time or so with a quantified number of problems as per team size. Then on subsequent discussions, the solutions should be discussed and should be solved in to the implementation perspective. So every team should have year end goals as measurable number of problems as per the size or complexity of the project. This specific activity will increase the depth of knowledge of the application what they had been using.

If I tell you for example, I had participated in such a collaboration environment where, I came to knew that a page load hits two main frames with cost of few dollars for each hit. Till that point in time, it was just a page load for me. Then it leads me to think of other possibilities also.

So many people in the project may not be aware of the business they handling with, but they will be doing the part they have assigned with it to the best. But if we give a platform for them to interact with everybody, on a high level perspective. I believe it can create wonders. Just that very thought in mind, when I say ideation, ITS NOT ABOUT CREATING IDEAS, BUT ABOUT DEVELOPING A PLATFORM FOR CREATING AN IDEA TOMORROW OR DAY AFTER TOMORROW. So all my thoughts being described here are not intended to not expected to get an idea, but its all about a talk to create a better platform for collaboration and then ideation. Till we reach this point, I would suggest that we should not talk about idea. Idea should be a by product of so many things happened to the team. Like ARGENTINA GOT WORLD CUP or like INDIA GOT WORLD CUP, same way we may get an idea in future.

2. So the ideation process should not start with the ideas itself. It should be a process that makes people understand the in depth of the application. Problems that client already facing. Future plans by the clients etc can be explained by the business analyst. It will make an in depth understanding of the environment and the situation in hand.

3. Then the ideas should be popping out as a by product of the understanding of the application and understanding of the business.

Possible suggestions in my perspective towards idea creating process:

1. Ideation should happen at associate level.

2. A Business Unit idea champion should be there to understand and upload an idea on the idea platform, when all project team comes up with ideas as being explained above.

3. Any idea, good or bad, should have a discussion platform either through an application or through some other sort of mechanism.

4. I suggest that each project should have an idea champ.

5. Business Unit level idea champ should be a coordinator to delegate the tasks at a very higher level. He should be informing the project level idea champ about the dates of discussions, idea collation, idea logging etc. Through this process, BU champ can make sure that the activities are happening and project level champs can make sure that activities are getting implemented.

6. Project level ideation should happen through the following steps to achieve the yearly goal

1.     a. Every team members including onsite, offshore, developers, managers, business analysts should have a meeting on current scenarios of the project.

2.     b. Existing problems

3.     c. Expectation of the clients.

4.     d. Areas of concerns

5.     e. Cost involving components

6.     f. Upcoming projects

7.     g. What is the need for more projects

8.     h. Situations onshore/offshore

9.     i. What impact the current project are making to client and business

10.  j. How could we save money

11.  k. Current political/economic situations that may impact the project.

12.  l. Discussions happening on the above mentioned base

So all the sort of situations/problems/expected solutions should be discussed among the team members within a targeted date. A project level Idea champ should be coordinating it to the completion reporting to the BU level idea champ.

7. The above-mentioned activities should be happening at the organizational level or at delivery center level.

8. After these discussions, collaboration/discussion has to happen on the topics for a span of time determined by the BU champ.

9. Then the idea champs at the project level should log finalized pre-defined number of ideas.

10. BU level champs should be approving the idea logging.

11. Then it should go through a process of verifying, analysis etc. Which has got much higher scope.

12. I think the need for an idea may not be able to be digested to a genius guy outside the scope of a project. Or he/she should be taking extra care on understanding the application and to analyze the need. So the idea analysis and implementation should be done with the help of the team member rather it being done totally an outside guy, no matter how genius he is.

13. A valid idea should be implemented; In a case, if an Ideator has a special interest in escalating his idea on his rejection, he should be given an opportunity to escalate his idea and explain it. He/she should be given a platform for the same. Rejection of an idea is a de-motivating act, if it is good one. So we should be really careful on analysis, verification and selection.